Night Owl Cards

  The birthday went pretty well. They're quiet these days. The highlight may be a new chair for my desk area where I type these posts. Yay! Also, I did use the gift card (actually two of them) for some current cards. You'll see that in the coming weeks.   After this post I'm taking a few days off from the blog. There are vacation things to do, yes, but also I've been getting a little cranky about blog stuff and that's an indication that I need some time away.   It'll also allow me to rededicate myself to some other topics besides showing off the latest cards, which I've done a lot of lately ... and am doing now.   A series of arrivals have been piling up on the roll-top desk and it's a mess so I'm clearing out. Enjoy the card view.     These were my latest claims on Diamond Jesters' Time Travel Trading. Both probably need explaining. For the Sweetness card, I added it simply because his earlier cards have been so difficult to obtain. Might as we...

  How about this? I'm posting about completing a fairly large set for the second time this week!   It just happened this way. Don't expect another one of these for months, unless cards start falling from the sky.   The final card to finish the 1979 Topps football set arrived this week. This set is one of two Topps football sets from my childhood that I collected and now hold an incredible amount of nostalgia, despite only casually following football back then. I finished the 1977 football set at the end of 2020 and, now, more than four years later, the other beloved football set is done.   I received a big boost on this set in April of 2023 when I came across a binder of '79 Topps football at a show and the dealer offered it to me for 30 bucks. That's when I began to really chase it. Although it's loaded with stars, there aren't many pricey cards in the set and I wasn't faced with trying to land a bunch of superstars at the end. In fact, this was the last c...

    It's no surprise that I would subscribe to that theory. Night owls wouldn't be caught dead spouting sayings about worms and early birds. Later has always worked for me, in dozens of scenarios. The latest one was the monthly card show this afternoon. The show doesn't start in the afternoon. Like most weekend shows, it's open bright and early, when I'm still sleeping. I'll get up early Saturday for a long road trip but otherwise, wake me up at 11.  That doesn't stop me from going into a mild panic that all the card goodies will be gone by the time I get there. So sometimes I roust myself up earlier than I want to. I did that last month, and when I got there, the place was so packed that I ended up not buying anything because I couldn't breathe. So this time I traveled through Saturday at my usual leisurely pace. I arrived at the show at around 1 (this is also the approximate time that I arrive at the big show at the state fairgrounds, and it's alwa...

Over the first nine or 10 years of writing this blog I wondered what it would be like to collect cards and have money at the same time. Oh, I wasn't destitute. I had a home and a job. Same home and job I have now. But the money just wasn't there. The kid took up a lot of cash and so did the house and the car and the pet. My job paid (and continues to pay) less than a lot of teachers make. I had enough leftover money for small card purchases here and there, three-times-a-year card shows (if the cash was there) and periodic trips to the card aisle. I wasn't left wanting. People sent me cards from everywhere, more-than-generous gifts in the mail, packages that included cards I only dreamed of owning. But still, what would it be like? What would it be like to have extra money to play with in this hobby? I'm still wondering. The kid's college doesn't pay for itself. And that roof repair is overdue. But 2019 has been good to me in making sure a little ext...